The America First Secretary of State Coalition is a coalition of Republican candidates. disproven claims Former President stole the 2020 election Donald Trump, raised more than $300,000 Through a Nevada-based PAC called Conservatives for Election Integrity In an effort to exert control on election administration in battleground state, an OpenSecrets analysis revealed that Nevada campaign finance records were analyzed by OpenSecrets.
The coalition aims to elect candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and will be positioned to influence the outcome of future elections, including the 2024 presidential race, according to the group’s founder, Jim Marchant, the GOP nominee in Nevada’s secretary of state race.
The spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting fraud has pushed secretary of state races to the forefront of American politics this past year.
Candidates for secretary-of-state have reported raising As of Oct. 13, there had been $51.8 million raised in the 2022 election cycle. OpenSecrets analysis shows that the 12 election-denying candidates for secretary of state were able to raise $6.2 million.
Marchant touted the coalition at a Trump rally in Minden, Nev., on Saturday, telling the crowd, “When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re gonna fix the whole country, and President Trump is gonna be president again in 2024.”
“All we have to do is influence it a little bit, and we win,” Marchant said in a September interview Steve Bannon, a former adviser of Trump. “And we negate whatever ability they have to manipulate the system.”
Republican candidates for the office of founding secretary-of-state in the coalition include Republican Kristina Karamo, a professor at a local community college. conspiracy theorist running for secretary of state in Michigan, and Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R)The effort to overthrow President Donald Trump was led by, who is running for Governor of Pennsylvania. Joe Biden’s win in the state.
The America First coalition has backed candidates for secretary of states in Arizona, Nevada Nevada, Michigan, New Mexico, New Mexico, Indiana, and for governor in Pennsylvania. This is a state where the governor appoints secretary of state. Trump has endorsed three of the coalition’s candidates — Mastriano, Karamo Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem (R), who is currently running for secretary of state — praising their advocacy of his false allegations of voter fraud as they vye for the opportunity to oversee elections, alarming some election experts and voting rights advocates.
The inaugural meeting of the America First coalition was held at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on May 1, 2021.
Participants included MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Overstock.com Founder Patrick ByrneBrian Kennedy, Claremont Institute founder, and Jim Hoft who runs the far-right Gateway Pundit site, which promotes conspiracy theories and hoaxes.
The coalition has endorsed more than a dozen candidates for secretary of state, all of whom have refused to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s victory in 2020 and have promised to dramatically restrict voting rights if elected.
Fundraising for America First coalition
In addition to the individual candidates’ campaigns, the America First coalition has an affiliated state-level PAC for fundraising – Conservatives for Election Integrity.
The PAC reported raising $331,422 during the first six months of 2022, OpenSecrets’ review of campaign finance records found. More than 40% came from one donor the America Project, a far-right group founded last year by a former Trump advisor and retired Gen. Michael Flynn And Byrne, a prominent election denier.
The America Project helped fund Republican lawmakers’ widely-criticized election review Last year, Maricopa County, Arizona. The group later contributed $100,000 A super PAC was formed in Colorado to support the Republican secretary of state candidate. Tina Peters, an election denier who was defeated in her primary
Conservatives for Election Integrity received 2 contributions in total $100,000 In June, MDB Realty, a Las Vegas-based real estate firm, was founded by Matthew Brimhall (a former executive at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas).
The bulk of the PAC’s spendingNearly $170,000 was donated to McShane LLCAfter it was reported that it had been dissolved, a Las Vegas-based political consulting firm called, attracted national media attention. recruited Two days after the 2020 presidential election, members of the Proud Boys hate organization will attend a protest and rally at a Nevada voting centre.
Campaign finance records Show that Conservatives for Election Integrity also paid $20,000 for Georgetown Advisory. Georgetown Advisory was founded and operated by Boris Epshteyn who was a former Trump advisor. concerted effort by Trump attorneys and political allies to prevent Biden’s victory from being certified.
Opponents of Marchant accused He used Conservatives for Election Integrity as a way to circumvent campaign finance laws, accepting contributions that were higher than the Nevada law limit.
Jesse Haw, a candidate for secretary of state who ran against Marchant in Nevada’s GOP primary, filed a complaint with the Nevada secretary of state’s office in May alleging Marchant used Conservatives for Election Integrity and his individual campaign interchangeably, which Haw claimed violates state laws limiting campaign contributions.
A similar complaint August by End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned PAC, which advocates for campaign finance reform. Recently, it announced a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. campaign Marchant is opposed
Origins of the America First Secretary Of State Coalition
Marchant, a former Nevada state legislator and Wayne Willott founded the America First coalition. It is based in Las Vegas. promoter The QAnon conspiracy theory who uses the pseudonym “Juan O. Savin.”
In remarks at a QAnon affiliate conference in Las Vegas last year, Marchant explained the origins of the coalition’s formation. Marchant claimed it began after the 2020 election when he attempted unsuccessfully to reverse his defeat in a Nevada Congressional election. He falsely blamed fraudulent mail-in ballots for the outcome.
Marchant shared with conference attendees that he hunkered down in his suite at the Venetian Las Vegas hotel for the following days. Just across the hall were a group of Trump attorneys and other allies of the president, beginning their effort to try to overturn Biden’s narrow win in Nevada.
Juan O. Savin showed up at Marchant’s suite, the candidate said, and the two collaborated for three to five months, “trying to expose the fraudulent election here in Nevada.”
Trump allies allegedly encouraged Marchant to run in Nevada for secretary of state in place of running for Congress again in 2022 during their strategy sessions. Marchant claims they also asked him to form a coalition of like-minded candidates in other states, echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
In response to the aforementioned, the America First coalition was formed. Secretary of State ProjectMarchant reports that it is. The project was originally a 527 political non-profit in 2006 that aimed to elect Democratic secretaries in battleground states. It was launched after some Democrats were concerned about Republican secretaries’ malfeasance in the administration of the presidential election. 2000 And 2004.
Election Deniers Push for Election “Reforms”
The 2020 election deniers “have not stopped–they have simply turned their sights on future elections,” Ben Berwick, counsel with Protect Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to resisting authoritarianism, told OpenSecrets in a written statement.
“We are seeing a concerted attempt to make it possible for partisan actors to manipulate or subvert a future election if they don’t like the results, primarily through misinformation and co-opting the machinery of election administration,” Berwick wrote.
The America First coalition supports several electoral reforms including tighter voter ID requirements, replacing electronic vote machines with hand-counted paper votes, ending early voting, and ending mail-in voting. carrying out “aggressive voter roll clean-up.”
David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit and executive director Center for Election Innovation & Research and co-author of the book “The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of ‘the Big Lie’” told OpenSecrets that most of these proposed reforms would make elections “less secure, less transparent, and lead to integrity problems.”
Becker said that while he is a strong supporter of using paper ballots that can later be checked in a properly-conducted election audit, the proposal of hand-counting ballots is “an incredibly bad idea that every election official will tell you is a bad idea, regardless of what their political philosophy is.”
“If you want inaccurate results that take a long time and cost way too much taxpayer money, hand-counts are your solution,” Becker told OpenSecrets. “But if you want accurate counts, as quickly as possible, then you need machines to do it.”
Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonprofit that promotes the responsible use of election technology, told OpenSecrets that hand counting ballots is viable on a small scale but “becomes tremendously complicated and error-prone in jurisdictions with many contests, with many candidates, with many different ballot styles.”
Lindeman said that even if hand counts are conducted correctly, the process of combining those counts to get correct totals is one that “necessarily involves computers.”
“The idea that we can avoid computers by doing everything some good old-fashioned way has no basis in reality, and at best is a waste of time that creates additional opportunities for error and even potentially misfeasance,” Lindeman added.
Becker also said that ending early voting and only permitting voting on election day are examples of “using the language of election integrity to dismantle the infrastructure of election integrity.”
“This is about diminishing confidence in the election system,” Becker said.
Thania Sanchez, senior vice-president for research and policy development at Thania Sanchez, stated that restricting early voting and voting by mail would also have a negative impact on students and elderly voters, as well as people with disabilities. States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates free and fair elections.
“These efforts to suppress the vote are a direct result of lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. It’s all part of a larger anti-democracy strategy to create doubt and confusion about the non-partisan administration of elections,” Sanchez wrote in a statement to OpenSecrets.
